Bio-Computer Created Inside Living Cell

A newly developed bio-computer allows scientists to "program" molecules to carry out "commands" inside cells.

Such devices could one day allow humans to manipulate biological systems directly, said the California Institute of Technology's Christina Smolke, who co-authored the study, which will be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

Bio-computers might eventually serve as brains for producing biofuels from cells, for example, or to control "smart drugs" that medicate only under certain conditions.

For example, a smart drug could sample a cellular environment and trigger a self-destruct sequence if disease is detected, Smolke said.

Ehud Shapiro is a computer scientist and biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He was not involved in the study.

Shapiro's team had previously created a bio-computer using DNA that worked inside a test tube and could perform simple calculations, such as determining whether a list of zeros and ones contained an even number of ones.

But unlike the new RNA computer, Shapiro's test tube bio-computer was "oblivious" to its surroundings and could not interact with or be affected by its environs in any meaningful way, he said.

"The work of Smolke shows a computer that can respond to molecules inside a cell," said Shapiro, who wrote a review of the new study for Science.

Shapiro looks forward to a day when RNA computers are replaced by more sophisticated devices made from proteins.

"Proteins are the most efficient natural devices we know of," he said. "We know how to evolve RNA to do simple tasks, but do not know yet how to engineer proteins."